After no longer than a year, legal residents are eligible to sponsor their spouses and unmarried children. Families must then meet conditions halfway to best practice before they can be reunited: they must go through an expensive procedure to prove that they have sufficient accommodation and finances. Once reunited, families are critically insecure (see box in access to nationality). However, relatives have equal rights as their sponsor to employment, education, and training, social security, social assistance, healthcare and housing. Latvia would reach best practice if all family members could get a residence permit in their own name after three years, as is the case in nine MIPEX countries including PL, SE and ES.
